Willing to lose

Hi friends,

It’s been a while. I’ve missed this community, but I’ve been keeping my head down working on projects, and that’s felt good and right for the last month or so. This week I thought of you all when I was exercising and the instructor told a story about a recent bike race she competed in. Her coach told her to use a strategy that’s not in her regular repetroire, and she resisted because it felt unfamiliar and uncomfortable. The coach’s response was, “You have to being willing to lose in order to win.”

This advice hit me right in the writing place, and I’ve been carrying it with me ever since—when I sit down to write, when I get a rejection, when I fret about how my debut novel is doing out there in the world.

Since I don’t actually believe there are any winners or losers in writing (even in literary competitions), what I’ve taken these words to mean for myself is that I have to be willing to take risks if I want to write something I’m proud of or surprised by or that turns out better than anything I ever imagined I could write. And that I have to be willing to face rejection if I want to enjoy any level of commercial success, whether it’s publishing a story in a literary journal or soaring to the New York Times bestseller list with a novel. Personally, I’m aiming for something in between!

When I’m writing, it means turning off the internal editor who loves to say things like, “No one is going to be interested in this but you,” “Your prose is too simple,” “Who do you think will even publish this?” “Who cares about a nipple growing on a wall anyway?”

A beautiful gift from my beautiful sister!

In a recent interview in New York Times Magazine, Marilynne Robinson (one of my favorite novelists of all time) said:

I think that my career has been against the grain. I have not chosen subjects or styles or anything that are characteristic of my generation of writers, and whatever else that does, it makes the point that you don’t have to go with the grain. People are much freer than they imagine. They will find much more latitude if they just use it. Talking to young writers, often they would come to the workshop with the idea that you have to learn one specific style or subject. For them to develop as a writer, what they have to realize is that they have a perspective that is theirs and need not be in some coercive relationship with what they take to be cultural expectations.

Robinson’s words struck me particularly hard because my debut novel Endpapers, about a genderqueer bookbinder who discovers a lesbian love letter hidden in the binding of a book, happened to wrap up and publish during the exact moment when issues of sexuality and gender have been rampant in the media and popular culture. Whereas the novel I’m writing now focuses on "ideal" womanhood, caretaking, and motherhood—which are also serious social issues but ones that don’t tend to get any attention.

Every so often I find myself worrying that no one will want or care about this novel I’m writing about such a mundane topic. (Don’t even get me started on how angry it makes me that we internalize the idea that women’s issues are boring or mundane. I do know they’re neither!)

I’m sharing this not for sympathy but in the hopes it will resonate with some of you too. I’ve already made the decision—over and over again—that this story is worth it to me, and I’m moved to see it through until it’s the best possible version of itself. But reminders like the ones from the exercise instructor and Marilynne Robinson help keep me inspired and on track. We have to be willing to bet on ourselves because it’s unlikely anyone else will if we don’t.

So good luck with whatever you’re working on right now. Go try something new! Do the thing you’ve been afraid to do!

Meanwhile, I look forward to next time.

Yours,

Jen